H.R. Harmer Dec. 10 sale to offer Erivan collection of U.S., Confederate States postal history

By Charles Snee

On Dec. 10 H.R. Harmer will offer the second part of the Erivan collection of United States and Confederate States postal history.

The auction will take place at 6 p.m. at the Collectors Club, 22 E. 35th St., in New York City.

Erivan Haub (1932-2018) was a billionaire and retail businessman whose prodigious collecting interests spanned the globe.

Covers from the Erivan collection in the following categories will cross the auction block during the sale: U.S. postal history to foreign destinations; carriers and locals, Pony Express; Confederate States postmasters’ provisionals; Hawaii; fancy cancellations from Waterbury, Conn., and other cities; and Union and Confederate patriotic covers of the Civil War.

Among the highlights of the Waterbury fancy cancel covers is what H.R. Harmer describes as a “bold, perfect strike” of the Left-handed Mug cancel on a small envelope franked with a faulty 3¢ ultramarine Locomotive (Scott 114) from the 1869 Pictorial definitive (regular-issue) series.

The cover, mailed from Waterbury to Middlebury, Conn., is listed by H.R. Harmer with a starting price of $3,000.

According to H.R. Harmer, there are no more than eight on-cover examples of the Waterbury Left-handed Mug cancel.

Details of the Dec. 10 sale are posted on the H.R. Harmer website.

Information is also available from H.R. Harmer, 45 Rockefeller Plaza, Suite 2607, New York, NY 10111.

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